Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Asia Society India presents Around the Table: Conversations about Milestones, Memories, Mapping, a retrospective showcasing featured works by modernists like Akbar Padamsee, Arpita Singh, Gulammohamed Sheikh, Himmat Shah, Jyoti Bhatt, Krishen Khanna and Vivan Sundaram, curated by Roobina Karode.
The exhibition is a recollection of times and practices of a generation of artists who shaped the landscape of art in post Independence India. Playing crucial roles as individuals, as collectives and as fellows, they responded and sought remedy to the emerging demands of a young nation. As cities like Bombay and Delhi expanded with the spirit of cosmopolitanism, and places like Baroda turned into testing grounds for art-institutional experiments, the seven citizen-artists–Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Arpita Singh, Jyoti Bhatt, Himmat Shah and Vivan Sundaram—stood out as distinct voices with clear positions, unapologetically honest about their beliefs. For the times to come, they would remain as trailblazers of not just artistic languages but as pedagogues, initiators and interlocutors of modern and contemporary art in India, often blurring the contours of the nation through their commitment to cultural heterogeneity and transnational ideals
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